Christopher Stasheff

Rod thought of Karl Marx and winced.

Big Tom had long since gotten lost in the battle. Rod hoped he was all right.

Then at the back of the rebel line, Big Tom rose up roaring ‘Tome!

Tome!’

A thousand beggars raffled to him and began to chop their way through the Southern ranks. The idea spread; beggar groups sprang up all along the line, and began to press the amoeba of war in on itself.

Big Tom was hewing his way through to a very definite goal. Rod frowned and stood up in his stirrups, trying to plot Big Tom’s course.

There, in the center of the battle, twenty frantic scarecrows labored furiously to construct some-sort of machine: a spidery tripod topped by a wasp-waisted contraption with alien curves. It was the councillors, with their last hope.

Rod rapped with his heels, and Fess leaped - but the robot had responded a touch slow. With a sense of dread, Rod realized that the strain of battle was beginning to tell on Fess.

The horse bounded over the beads of the army and plowed through to the force of councillors, just as Tom broke through from the other side, with only a fraction of his beggar troops.

A long, lurking moment of silence filled the little circle as the councillors saw their executors.

Then the councillors howled, drawing back into a tight circle about the machine, the ferocity of despair in their eyes, their glowing swords leaping out.

Tom’s boys circled out around the councillors and closed in. The councillors’ swords were deadly; but they bad to hit to be effective, and the beggars were good at hitting and getting clear.

A lot of beggars dropped, cut in half; but a lot more lived. They outnumbered the councillors four to one. They whittled away at the ranks.

The councillors screamed, chopping, and died.

In the center of the circle, Rod could make out one lonely figure still working frantically at the machine - Durer.

Then., suddenly, there were only five councillors left.

Durer spun away from the machine with a shriek of despair and lugged something out of his wallet-pouch.

A laser pistol.